LIFE HAS IT’S WAY WITH GERARD

27 November 2016February 1, 2017

As a camera-shy person, Gerry isn’t particularly fond of being filmed.
'Being an artist is a very isolated business..’, he says.
Painting to him is such an intimate act and intense experience that having a pair of eyes and a couple of lenses staring at him is not only distracting, but it can very often affect his inspiration and the energy surrounding him.
His devotion to painting is far from documenting or advertising it and he leaves the publicity to others who probably are greater at being objective, anyway.
En plein air, Gerry feels vibrations of what surrounds him, movements of the light or wind, each passer-by that carries certain energy, all of which could add or take something away from the work. In fact, Gerry says jokingly, that if it wasn’t for the video and the filming him during the London Pintar Rapido competition, he would have probably won the 1st prize.

Life has its way with Gerard, though.
It often presents him with “situations” which he doesn’t particularly anticipate or search for. Situations, which when they do appear at his doorstep, he surrenders to and welcomes. He has this capacity of submitting himself to a moment and seeing what is out there for him.
Even when he goes to a nearby grocery store with an intention to just do trivial shopping he can come back to his wife with a ‘you-won’t-believe-what-has-just-happened’ story, which will resolve something they had been worried about for days. All that effortlessly, just because life has its way with Gerard.
So when Gerry walks on the streets of Dalkey one evening just before the Pintar Rapido competition, he stumbles upon a young man who is standing outside a local pub and hears him say: “Are you Gerry Byrne?”.
Over the course of 30-year old career as an artist, Gerry has realised that although quite a few people recognise his work, rarely anybody knows who the person behind it is. And so he gets surprised each time someone calls him out, because, he says: "unless someone is highly present in the media, how often is one able to put the face to the name?”

It appears, though, that it is the very same painting, which decorates the Finnegan’s pub in Dalkey, through which Gerry met Agata 8 years ago that now mysteriously caught the attention of the young man, too.
They both start talking and it happens that Daniel works for a video production company in London. Until that moment Gerard has had no intention of having him and his art filmed during the London Pintar Rapido competition, but in his mind, Daniel is not just any video maker, but THE video maker, a fellow artist. Gerry takes the chance and asks if Daniel would like to film him during his first ever plein air competition. Daniel agrees of course (because who wouldn’t?) and then he creates this...